1. Technical Field
This invention relates to telecommunications services and, more particularly, to techniques for providing a service announcement system capable of quickly handling a service failure within a network switch.
2. Description of the Relevant Art
In recent years, an increasing number of businesses utilize service announcement systems to initially answer calls from their incoming callers. Service announcement systems have significantly developed in sophistication in large part due to the computerization of telecommunication systems. Service announcement systems first became available with the introduction of the #4 electronic switching system or the 4ESS switch. The 4ESS switch""s announcement capabilities were originally designed primarily to signal a calling party about a call failure. The switch could connect 896 simultaneous callers to any of a small variety of call failure tones and announcements. The announcement set included 20 different, synchronized, 12-second announcements referred to as phased announcements.
Since the introduction of the 4ESS switch, many improvements have been made to the capabilities of service announcement systems. Improved hardware and software capabilities have allowed service announcement systems to handle more callers at the same time as well as exponentially increase the range of announcement messages that can be delivered to the calling part. Presently available service announcement systems are now capable of handling hundreds of thousands of calls each day and can deliver over 65,000 different announcements messages.
Service announcement systems are also now capable of collecting information from the calling parties, typically touch tone or spoken replies, to connect the caller to the appropriate line or to provide the caller with the appropriate service announcement. In addition, service announcement systems may be periodically updated (by the system as well as the service announcement customer) to provide more up-to-date announcement messages to the calling party. Further, service announcement systems are capable of providing faster connections to the service announcement messages. As a result of this increased capability, service announcement systems can now quickly deliver up-to-date announcement messages that are applicable to a broad range of purposes for the calling party. Service announcement systems also benefit the service announcement customer since incoming calls can be handled more efficiently through the service announcement system. In addition, service announcement systems can provide a wide variety of capabilities and features to accommodate the customer""s specific business needs.
An announcement set, which contains the entire range of announcement messages, is typically stored in a pair of identical disks residing at a switch of the telephone network and more particularly within a local announcement controller and particularly a Service Circuit Unit (SCU) of the switch. Each switch typically has two or more announcement controllers or SCUs which provide connectivity to as many as 242 telephone trunks. The announcement set is stored in two disks to reduce the access time for retrieving the desired service announcement message. Such systems advantageously cat store large amounts of service announcement messages and can quickly retrieve the desired service announcement to be provided to the calling party.
Present service announcement systems, however, are limiting in the event that one of the SCUs containing the service announcement set fails. With a failed SCU, the service announcement system is inoperable to those trunks normally serviced by that SCU. Calling parties coupled to those trunks therefore cannot receive any service announcements during this time period. This is also problematic for the telephone company""s customers who cannot effectively conduct business with their calling customers. The telephone company must devote many hours isolating or sectionalizing the failed site. Typically, an SCU goes down when a disk within the SCU containing the service announcement set fails. In order to repair the failure, the announcement set stored within the failed disk must be recopied. Recopying is a labor-intensive, time-consuming process. Typically under present systems, to restore the railed disk, a disk containing the announcement set from another SCU must be removed and re-copied onto the failed disk. During this time, both SCU""s are out of operation. The second disk in the SCU may also be used to restore the failed disk, however, copying commands are complicated and susceptible to operator error. Accordingly, this approach is not favored. Alternatively, the announcement set is re-copied on a disk from a central site and delivered via courier to the site for copying, where the operator engages in a labor-intensive copying procedure. Another option is to download the announcement set over the communications line, however, this downloading process can take up to eight or nine hours.
In addition to the problem of restoring failed SCUs, there is the risk of mismatches in announcements between SCUs within the same switch and even SCUs of different switches. This risk is even more pronounced with service announcement systems now capable of continually updating its service announcement messages. This risk is also prevalent in the event that an SCU fails and it is hours before it is restored. During the period when an SCU is out of service the associated switch buffers any updates to the announcement set and updates the SCU""s announcement set right before it is placed back in service. With this delay in providing updates to the SCU during a failure, there is a risk that the announcement updates may not properly be made. The undesirable result is that calling parties can receive inconsistent or incorrect announcement messages.
Audit checks may be performed to identify any mismatches between the announcement sets between two SCUs. Typically, the audit check compares the disks of SCUs residing at the same switch. This procedure, however, is limiting since the audit check is not performed during an SCU failure. Further, the audit check is not performed on a real-time basis but rather every eight seconds and for one announcement set. More significantly, the audit check does not provide any mechanism to correct for any mismatches. To correct any mismatches between announcement sets, the correct announcement sets must be re-copied onto the faulty SCUs, again a labor-intensive, time-consuming procedure.
The present invention provides an improved technique to overcome the problems associated with a failed switch having service announcement capabilities. In one embodiment of the present invention, a copy of the complete service announcement set at a switch is provided in a database coupled to an Announcement Administration Processor (AAP). In the event that a failure occurs with a memory device having stored therein the announcement set, the memory being part of an announcement controller or a Service Circuit Unit (SCU), the service announcement set residing within the AAP may be applied directly to the failed memory device, thereby avoiding the problems associated with techniques known in the art. Additionally. before a failed SCU is restored, the system compares the announcement sets in the restored memory device with a memory device at another SCU to ensure that there are no mismatches between the announcement sets. Advantageously, the present invention provides a way to quickly restore failed switches without requiring a labor-intensive procedure and ensures against mismatches of announcement sets between SCUs.
These as well as other novel advantages, details, embodiments, features and objects of the present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from following the detailed description of the invention, the attached claims and accompanying drawings, listed herein below, which are useful in explaining the invention.